#429 Use whatever it takes

If you don’t make a conscious choice to do something new, the choice will be made for you: you’ll stick with the default behavior you were doing before.

Your job is to stick to your conscious choices for long enough so they can become the new default behavior.

The other day, I talked about changing your focus to change how you feel about the events in your day.

But something strange happened when I first had that realization.

It didn’t feel like a relief.

Do I even want that responsibility? To choose how events affect me?

After all, that would take away my right to complain about how poorly life treats me.
I couldn’t ascribe any successes or achievements to “sheer luck” anymore.
And wouldn’t it be silly to say I don’t deserve happiness, luck, or anything good if I knew I could change my focus and be lucky this very moment?

What a burden.

I’m still deciding if I am strong enough to carry it.

But one thing’s for sure: the days I have the presence of mind to direct my focus are the days I feel best.

I wonder if it’d be like that for you, too.

Maybe you could try it out? Even if it’s to indulge me.

See how it feels.

And let me know how it goes. I’m curious about you.

If I don’t meditate today, will I ever become a consistent practitioner?

If I don’t go for that run today, will I ever become a runner?

If I don’t stick to my diet today, will I ever get in shape?

There’s a time and place for being a hardliner about your habits – the first 30-45 days when the naysayer voice in your head still says, “let’s see how long it takes before I give up again.”

After all, you’re building a new identity and will still be pulled back towards your old ways.

But at some point, hardliners need to make the switch to “elastic discipline“:

Being disciplined about your daily practice while trusting yourself enough that when life inevitably puts you in a situation where you HAVE to violate your principles, you can navigate it, adjust your behavior, and afterward, like an elastic band, bounce back to your disciplined practice.

This is an overlooked part of habit-building. Because if you don’t consciously build the self-trust that you can, in fact, persevere despite setbacks, you’ll live in fear of giving up forever.

So initially, when you start a new habit, be a hardliner.

Use Tiny Trust Builders to start building confidence in your ability to persevere.

After 30 days, start asking yourself: do I trust myself enough to skip a day and then bounce back to my disciplined practice tomorrow?

Skip a day, then start again.

Build self-trust.

Feel your confidence and self-worth grow.

Cultivate “elastic discipline” and become free.

5 dead-simple steps to start writing – even if you’ve tried everything:

1. Set aside dedicated time tomorrow morning. From now on, this is your dedicated time every day.
2. Start with a Tiny Trust Builder; something that makes it easy for you to show up consistently. Write for one minute. Write one sentence. Write one word. If it feels hard to do every day, think smaller.
3. First build the habit, then build skill. Right now, you’re building a daily writing habit, not a “daily masterpiece” habit. That comes later.
4. If step 3 feels hard: write something bad on purpose.
5. If step 4 feels hard and you don’t feel motivated to write: write anyway. You don’t need motivation to write. You’re a writer. So you write.

Good luck!